tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post8393661301519693367..comments2015-02-05T17:17:19.180+00:00Comments on the life and opinions of : The Rise of the Silver SurferAndrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-37845101234763340082007-02-28T23:21:00.000+00:002007-02-28T23:21:00.000+00:00Kevin...You are going to love my Easter special......Kevin...<BR/><BR/>You are going to love my Easter special...Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-43833676778804562032007-02-27T16:53:00.000+00:002007-02-27T16:53:00.000+00:00Hmm... been reading source and redaction criticism...Hmm... been reading source and redaction criticism, Andrew?Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08736062723657125762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-26345722959252552192007-02-26T09:47:00.000+00:002007-02-26T09:47:00.000+00:00I am currently working on a Freudian interpretatio...I am currently working on a Freudian interpretation of the Galactus saga which combines both your posts here. I estimate it will eventually run to a three-volume book published by a major academic group. However my provisional findings are as follows…<BR/><BR/>The empowering Nullifier is of course the Father’s penis, stolen from him by the ‘son’ emerging into manhood./self-determination, thereby nullifying/castrating the Father’s symbolic power. Galactus recoils to see his own member in the hands of a ‘child’. This is of course why the later Surfer needs to wear trunks.<BR/><BR/>(NB When I say a ‘three-volume’ book I also estimate the beginning and end of it will be about something else entirely.)Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15277437934572609971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-74651088395688613862007-02-21T13:12:00.000+00:002007-02-21T13:12:00.000+00:00“Share the anguish of the Surfer! Free colour post...<I>“Share the anguish of the Surfer! Free colour poster inside!”</I><BR/><BR/>Beautiful.Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09126191974405378246noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-37618094248512565262007-02-21T10:13:00.000+00:002007-02-21T10:13:00.000+00:00The God-like Galactus represents the weight of tra...<I>The God-like Galactus represents the weight of tradition, which our heroes defy by Moving Stuff from Its Accustomed Places.</I><BR/><BR/>‘scuse the swift follow-up, and the self-quoting, but like Lee and Kirby I’m writing this on the hoof!<BR/><BR/>Galactus represents the Great Chain of Being. Don’t grumble when something bigger than you decides you’re for dinner, that’s just the way of things mate. Their argument against this is that humans may be small potatoes now but they’re doing their best to grow and develop. Humans don’t have a fixed role in the cosmology, they’re able to evolve. Galactus’ parting speech makes this explicit. “If I’m going hungry tonight, it had better be because you’re gonna grow into something worthwhile!”Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15277437934572609971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-26508421459467363712007-02-21T10:05:00.000+00:002007-02-21T10:05:00.000+00:00Mind you, I'd be more inclined to think of it in m...<I>Mind you, I'd be more inclined to think of it in mythological terms than as a straight father vs son thing. Surely what has happened is that someone has flown up to heaven and stolen the weapons of the gods to use against them? </I><BR/><BR/>This sounds like one of those rare occasions when we can say “we’re both right”! Galactus is both the anti-father and anti-God. (Rather than granting life, he seeks to devour it.) We may be sad forty-somethings discussing all of this, but Marvel comics had a juvenile audience so you’d expect images of the father to come up. And of course Reed is the ‘good father’ to Ben and Johnny, so ‘bad father’ antagonists are likely.<BR/><BR/><I>Since Lee and Kirby had already sent the Torch off into space, you end up with both version side by side in the same story. </I><BR/><BR/>Seems the most likely explanation to me. They either thought of the Surfer going too late or not at all. More to suggest the Surfer sub-plot was being developed on the hoof. (Or, more accurately, even further on the hoof than usual.) <BR/><BR/><I>…in Version #1, Galactus would have been defeated by the Human Torch stealing his own weapon from under his nose</I><BR/><BR/>Galactus doesn’t really see the Ultimate Plot Dev… I mean Nullifier as his weapon so much as That Thing Which Must Never Be Used And Kept In the Back of the Cupboard. He recoils against it when Reed brandishes it like Dracula against a crucifix or George Bush against common sense. Reed doesn’t use it of course, but his willingness to is important. I think it’s a bit more than the bomb analogy I mentioned earlier. The God-like Galactus represents the weight of tradition, which our heroes defy by Moving Stuff from Its Accustomed Places. The Surfer rebels and Reed grabs the Nullifier. (About the only point where the two sub-plots coalesce!)<BR/><BR/>I did look through these issues last night. Certainly the Surfer who lands on Alicia’s skylight doesn’t seem the same Surfer who fell off the roof of the Baxter building. (Moreover the robot they later fight would seem to take the role of the original Surfer, something which hits people and doesn’t have a speaking role.) But isn’t it mere supposition to see his changing role as coming from Lee? It could have come from Kirby, or a combination of the two. <BR/><BR/>And while the speaking-role Surfer isn’t the original kid-who-hangs-out-with-the-school-bully conception, neither is he the ‘agonised Hamlet’/’sufferin’ Jesus’ that Lee wrote in the solo comic. So noble as to be somewhat retarded seems his chief characteristic.<BR/><BR/>PS I still have the Marvel UK Surfer summer special with the inspired byline “Share the anguish of the Surfer! Free colour poster inside!” That’s always seemed to me the most succinct summary of Marvel at the time.Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15277437934572609971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-80016149696007970422007-02-21T08:39:00.000+00:002007-02-21T08:39:00.000+00:00..."directors rarely write their own screenplays"....<I>..."directors rarely write their own screenplays"....</I><BR/><BR/>I'm not sure what this is a quote from, but as a skim of IMDB suggests that Peter Jackson is (along with his wife) credited as one of the writers on every major film which he's directed - adapted or original - I would tend to assume that he's one director who <I>does</I> write his own screenplays. Unless I've missed the "Jackson exposed as amazing serial liar" story somewhere.<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, I don't know much about what goes on inside film studios, but a lot of people who do, seem to agree that directors <I>are</I> responsible for much of the quality and style of the films they make (and indeed, there are one or two directors who even I can see have distinctive styles). This opinion isn't only held by effete French academic critics; it seems to be accepted by hard-nosed Hollywood businessmen too. Making a movie is a hideously complex process, and the director is evidently the one who holds it together and gives it structure - he's not just some loon who sits in an armchair throwing off vague ideas.<BR/><BR/>Now, writers may be under-credited in the business (insert the Hollywood joke about the starlet who was so dumb she slept with the writer - though as Joe Eszterhas boasts of getting Sharon Stone into bed, and Stone doesn't seem to be entirely stupid, that one may be out of date by now), and I gather that editors are regarded as much more important by people who know what they do than by outsiders - but people like John Woo, John Ford, or Orson Welles are apparently valued for <I>something</I>.<BR/><BR/>(However. "Michel Gondry needs the discipline provided by Charlie Kaufman to produce something moving rather than just cute." Discuss.)Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09126191974405378246noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-89804018117215349662007-02-21T04:16:00.000+00:002007-02-21T04:16:00.000+00:00This is rather outstanding work.I like it much bet...This is rather outstanding work.<BR/><BR/>I like it much better than the extended Dave Sim parody you were doing a few weeks back.Eric Spratlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01693985407942885193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-49562472512956715862007-02-20T19:07:00.000+00:002007-02-20T19:07:00.000+00:00For some reason this has never occurred to me befo...<I>For some reason this has never occurred to me before, but why isn’t it the Surfer who goes to get the Great Big Button? For one thing he’s the most qualified candidate. (“What we need is someone who knows how to soar the spaceways. Oh sod it! Johnny, you’ll have to go! Fire burns well in space, I hear.”) But it would also take the heresy of the defection up a notch. It would be the rebellious kiddie sneaking into daddy’s bedroom to nick his shotgun, his whuppin’ belt or whatever other symptom of his power.</I><BR/><BR/>Curse you and your critical faculties, why didn't I think of that?<BR/><BR/>Mind you, I'd be more inclined to think of it in mythological terms than as a straight father vs son thing. Surely what has happened is that someone has flown up to heaven and stolen the weapons of the gods to use against them? <BR/><BR/>I said that "The Watcher" was a necessary plot pivot to get the Human Torch from earth to Galactus "planet". But this assumes that Galactus "planet" has to be just round the corner from the center of infinity. But it could just as well have been in orbit around the earth, say, a "Mother Ship" from which the Spherical thing emerged. In which case, Lee might have said:<BR/><BR/>"While the rest of the F.F try to hold out against Galactus, the Human Torch flies up to Galactus Mother Ship and steals the Ultimate Nullifier." <BR/><BR/>Kirby decided that it would be more fun if the space station was further away, and used the Watcher to send him there. <BR/><BR/>This means that in Version #1, Galactus would have been defeated by the Human Torch stealing his own weapon from under his nose; but Version #2 had his favored servant rebelling against him. Since Lee and Kirby had already sent the Torch off into space, you end up with both version side by side in the same story. On the one hand, the legend of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus (naturally, Jonny Storm gets to play the fire-thief) and on the other the legend of Lucifer rebelling against Jehovah and being cast down from heaven. <BR/><BR/>Isn't there a long standing and well-attested tradition that the first concept that Lee presented to Kirby was "Have them fight God?"Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-50122479182000130032007-02-20T10:33:00.000+00:002007-02-20T10:33:00.000+00:00SpeculationYes. But informed speculation, which is...<B>Speculation</B><BR/>Yes. But <I>informed</I> speculation, which is most likely the best we’re ever going to get. Nice post! You make me want to go back to my issues, to see if I can find the marks of sticky tape and glue you point to.<BR/><BR/><I>The romantic idea that Jolly Jack was simply the illustrator of stories that were created by Smiley Stan has been thoroughly debunked. But some people have swung the other way and said that Lee's role was simply to provide copy for stories that were conceived, written and drawn by Kirby alone . Some people even year for a 'pure' Kirby, unadulterated by Lee's interference. </I><BR/><BR/>Lee is Galactus and Kirby the rebellious Surfer to a lot of people, aren’t they? My personal take on people’s response to all this is that there’s something in the concept of commercial art that makes them uneasy. They gravitate more towards Fantastic Four comics than Wagner operas, but then there turns out to be something uncomfortable about the bed they’re lying on. So they try to subdivide, someone must have been providing the true art and someone else dragging the vision down into the tawdry world of commerce. Some Beatles fans like to effectively believe Lennon was Kirby and McCartney Lee. (Their ‘evidence’ being Lennon for a while managed to convince himself of this, like Lennon couldn’t convince himself of anything.)<BR/><BR/><I>Kirby without Lee never had this much breadth, this much discipline, this much suspense.</I><BR/><BR/>Once you take the fans’ emotional investment out of the equation, it seems abundantly clear that both Lee and Kirby were bringing things to the table. You could even argue they needed each other, in a volatile marriage sort of way. I’m often amused by the way people often talk of things as if Lee and Kirby never worked apart, so it was impossible to see what they would do without each other. When flying solo, Kirby had such a ceaseless imagination that there became something reckless about it. His later stories sometimes read like you’re being bombarded by ideas. He needed if not an editor exactly, someone by his side to say “that silver guy looks cool. Why not do something more with him before you rush onto the next thing? And the guy with rotor blades coming out of his head? Well, confidentially Jack…”<BR/><BR/><I>It's easy to picture the story without Surfer in it. In truth, he sits un-easily in the published version. His sub-plot has very little effect on what is going on; his rebellion doesn't actually achieve very much. Galactus is defeated, not by his herald's defection, but by the Watcher's perennial violation of the Prime Directive. Cut the Surfer out of the story, and you are left with 'Galactus invades earth; Human Torch fetches Ultimate Nullifier; Galactus goes away again.'. </I><BR/><BR/>Probably like most who haven’t re-read the story for a while, I’d forgotten all about the Great Big Button… sorry, I mean Ultimate Nullifier. You remember the emotional drama of the Surfer’s defection, don’t you? The Nullifier’s obviously an analogy for the nuclear deterrent, but Galactus is remembered precisely because he’s so much more than just another ‘Red horde’ stand-in. <BR/><BR/>For some reason this has never occurred to me before, but why isn’t it the Surfer who goes to get the Great Big Button? For one thing he’s the most qualified candidate. (“What we need is someone who knows how to soar the spaceways. Oh sod it! Johnny, you’ll have to go! Fire burns well in space, I hear.”) But it would also take the heresy of the defection up a notch. It would be the rebellious kiddie sneaking into daddy’s bedroom to nick his shotgun, his whuppin’ belt or whatever other symptom of his power.<BR/><BR/><I>It is very strange to show Johnny's journey to Galactus' home, and his journey back, but not to show what happens while he was there. Surely Kirby would have loved to draw the interior of Galactus space station? It looks distinctly as if a page or two has been cut here, or at any rate, as if someone changed their mind about the focus of the story.</I><BR/><BR/>Possibly, but this seems to me the weakest of your arguments. For one thing Kirby was never one to let sense get in the way of drama. If he’d have drawn that scene, I suspect he’d have kept it in, even at the expense of losing something plot-necessary. But more importantly, what you leave out can be as dramatically effective as what you put in. (I always thought it was a mistake to show the inside of the Mother Ship in the reconstituted Close Encounters, for example. In the original it’s bigger than anything you can imagine!) I’m writing from memory, but doesn’t Johnny’s return feature him passing out at the sights? “We’re just ants!” etc. (‘scuse me if memory fails me here!) This gains in weight if we know that he’s been subjected to sights we the reader have missed.Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15277437934572609971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-46597285163295278652007-02-20T10:29:00.000+00:002007-02-20T10:29:00.000+00:00..."directors rarely write their own screenplays"......."directors rarely write their own screenplays"....Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-8903332775939120382007-02-20T09:35:00.000+00:002007-02-20T09:35:00.000+00:00Yet Peter Jackson doesn't ... write scripts ...Er,...<I>Yet Peter Jackson doesn't ... write scripts ...</I><BR/><BR/>Er, point of information. Yes he does.Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09126191974405378246noreply@blogger.com